When a customer requests the provision of a service from a mobile agent such as a taxi, a call can be made directly to a driver of a taxi, but more commonly, one will call an ordering service responsible for assigning orders to a number of taxis which subscribe to or are employed by the ordering service.
Traditionally, such services have utilised a dispatcher who is responsible for matching orders to drivers by querying drivers as to their current location and/or destination, and using their knowledge of the geography and traffic conditions faced by the respective drivers, assigning the orders (for which the pick-up point and time are known from the responses of callers) to particular drivers.
This system is however limited by the knowledge of the dispatcher and therefore subject to human error. In consequence, the resources of the service are not utilised to their maximum potential and users of the service (i.e. customers) do not have the best available service.
Apart from taxi ordering services, the same types of problems are faced by other mobile agent assignment services. For example, if a number of repair personnel are available within a city to respond to requests to repair equipment, it is important to choose the most suitable person to respond to a request for repair services (which generally means the person who can first arrive at the location where the repair is required).
It is possible to add an element of automation by using global positioning system (GPS) information obtained from the customers and/or agents to determine the closest available agent to a current customer. However the customer may not, at the time of the call, be at the location where the service has been requested, and the agent closest to the customer at the time of the call may not be the most suitable agent to take the order, because the agent may be moving away from the caller or because the agent may not become free for a considerable time.
The invention has as an object the provision of an improved method of assigning orders or tasks to mobile agents which make a better use of the available agents and which reduce the human error element of such assignments.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of assigning location-based orders to mobile agents, and to provide apparatus and computer program products for use in such applications.